How the internet helped crack the Astros' sign-stealing case - <AUTHOR> https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/28476354/how-internet-helped-crack-astros-sign-stealing-case <comment><USER3> I assume there are some baseball fans here on HN ...

This is, in my opinion, a watershed moment here for how Baseball is going to deal with technology. After the Moneyball "revolution" lots of people, both in the game and casual fans, talked about how technology would again "revolutionize" the sport[0]. Things like player evaluations and injury prediction + prevention were what was mostly talked about (this was back in ~2014-2015 or so). There really hasn't been much talk about this since then, as far as I can tell, or it's been kept as a trade secret by teams. What's happened with this Astros scandal is something else entirely. This was not the future of the game we wanted, and there will need to be a philosophical discussion had in short order about what we're going to allow in the future (what they did was not).

Complicating all of this is that Houston winning the last game of the season in 2017 was largely viewed as a "victory" for the stats nerds over the traditionalists[1], and was predicted in 2014[2]. So the idea that the "technology" they used to do this wasn't _just_ learning things other teams couldn't about their own players, but essentially a gimmick to steal signs not only casts a shadow on the integrity of the game but also calls into question the methodology itself to a certain extent - though to be honest I think the argument is pretty much over at this point on stats vs traditionalists.

[0][https://www.si.com/mlb/2014/07/08/billy-beane-technology- wil...](https://www.si.com/mlb/2014/07/08/billy-beane-technology-will- revolutionize-baseball)

[1][https://www.si.com/mlb/2017/10/24/houston-astros-sports- illu...](https://www.si.com/mlb/2017/10/24/houston-astros-sports-illustrated- world-series-prediction)

[2][https://www.si.com/longform/astros/index.html](https://www.si.com/longform/astros/index.html)

<comment><USER4> > casts a shadow on the integrity of the game

MLB. FIFA. OOC. ... let me know when you can see a difference, lol.

<comment><USER3> Well, the latter two seem institutionally corrupt in a way MLB is not - <USER2> least today.

<comment><USER5> The feigned shock at steroids. The shakedowns of cities for ballparks while offering a suite to the city council and other politicians. The corruption is just a local flavor.

<comment><USER3> >The feigned shock at steroids.

Barry Bonds still isn't in the Hall of Fame. Neither is Roger Clemons. The institution seems to be reacting appropriately in my book.

>The shakedowns of cities...

Okay, you got me there I guess. Which stadium are you thinking of though? My understanding of the Braves stadium deal(most recent stadium deal that comes to mind) is that the team is required to pay off the county's bonds raised over some period of time (I'm not from Atlanta, so this is just my recollection). I suppose Target Field in Minneapolis was kind of a raw deal. I can meet you half way on thinking that a lot of these projects are in fact crap for local communities, but I think we've seen this phenomenon in the NFL more than MLB. Teams like the Rams and the Chargers basically held their local governments hostage for a new stadium and when they didn't get one they moved. This hasn't happened in MLB for a long time.

<comment><USER6> The MLB isn't in charge of who gets into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure what you mean. Veteran players are basically the ones who decide. The system works essentially as a check on the institution of Baseball itself. If you mean to say that owners and administrators don't have much say then, yeah, I guess you're right. But I wouldn't change the system as it exists today.

<comment><USER6> Basically I mean that, yeah, and it's the writers who do the voting -- Bonds and Clemens are on the ballot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Jomboy Media is worth checking out, even if you don't follow or care about baseball. His breakdowns are fun to watch.

For example: [https://youtu.be/W1pJRRJntUo](https://youtu.be/W1pJRRJntUo)

</comment><comment><USER8> For the uninitiated, how do you steal signs by making a banging noise? What is a "sign", anyway? What electronics are involved? The article doesn't explain anything.

<comment><USER9> During a game, the catcher and the pitcher have to both know what pitch is being thrown so the catcher can catch it - it's hard to catch breaking balls unless you know to expect one. So the game has evolved that the catcher normally "calls" games, eg decides what pitch the pitcher is going to throw. Catchers make careers on how well they call games. They are the smartest players on the field, and have to remember the stats and approaches for every batter on the other team, not only for the starting pitcher that day but also all the relievers that might be used in a game. They communicate the pitch to be thrown to the pitcher using hand signals, normally with the non-catching hand on the inside of their thigh so the batter can't see the sign.

But anyone behind the pitcher can of course see the sign, and after seeing a few tens of pitches at most can figure out which sign corresponds to which pitch. Knowing what pitch is coming is a significant advantage to the hitter.

It's legal for a runner on second to watch the catcher and convey those signs to the pitcher, but in MLB it's strictly illegal to use "technology" - meaning, mostly, optics or electronics.

<comment><USER10> To add to this, the Astros has basically installed cameras in their stadium that allowed the coaches and players in the dugout to know which sign the catcher has signalled (the dugouts are behind the catcher, so you cannot normally see the catchers sign from there).

The dugout then used the drum banging method to convey that information to the batter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think the HN baseball fan crowd is the perfect audience for this paper, entitled "A Mathematical Analysis of Catcher/Pitcher Encryption Schemes."

[https://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.857/2018/project/mlancast- sa...](https://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.857/2018/project/mlancast-samird-mtwu- Baseball.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Thanks, sharing this with my fantasy league.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If the Astros were using the standard public TV camera view, why can't there be some real time image analysis that blurs the signs? If we can instantly recognize millions of faces, it seems pretty simple to blur a catcher's hands when making a sign.

<comment><USER13> There's no way they were using the TV feed - there'd be too much lag to be useful. The 'bangs' were just way too fast. They might have been using a feed destined for broadcast... Adding blur between camera and broadcast just adds a layer of complexity. Nothing stops the team from installing their own camera. The league shouldn't have to add technology censors to prevent a team from cheating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> As a long time baseball fan, the "punishment" is a joke. This is one of the worst cheating scandals in baseball history and Rob Manfred (Commissioner of MLB) basically gave a slap on the wrist. Every team/player in the league would be willing to trade this "punishment" for a World Series title.

<comment><USER15> They really should have stripped away Astro's championship title, not sure what their justification was. Why would the Astros want to keep this championship title in their cabinet anyway? To remind themselves and their fans of what their team did that year?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think the best part about the whole thing is that there are so many memes accompanying the investigation.

I'm not sure however, that the internet really helped crack the case. Th article shows that the internet came to similar conclusions as the real MLB investigation.

<comment><USER17> I read an article today from 2018 that mentioned the Astros banging trash cans. Apparently MLB has known about these allegations for a while and didn't investigate. It took it coming out on social media for them to finally launch the investigation.

<comment><USER18> Can you link to the article?

<comment><USER17> Last paragraph: [https://sports.yahoo.com/sources-red-sox-warned-indians- astr...](https://sports.yahoo.com/sources-red-sox-warned-indians-astros- attempting-steal-signs-information-032027336.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I will just say this. I am a Dodgers fan and Houston's cheating may well have ruined Kershaw's legacy, one of the best pitchers to have ever lived and played baseball. Shame shame Shame.

<comment><USER20> Similar for me as a Detroit fan with Justin Verlander. Half of me is glad to see his World Series win wasn't revoked, but the other half says he was party to the cheating and should have been punished. But the shame is he's one of the best pitchers in the game _without_ cheating... why did he do it? Shame indeed.

<comment><USER21> Well, yours is the converse, no? Kershaw lost in part to Houston's sign- stealing, Verlander won.

<comment><USER22> And then Verlander lost against the Nationals, because they stole the signs to him. This is the most plausible explanation for his losses. And the internet didn't help there, rather the opposite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> A few questions: 1) at best this happens at~50% of the games. The Astros won the series in LA that year. Did they find a way to cheat everywhere? 2) what is the end game here? The Astros have won exactly 1 World Series. Hardly a huge disparity. 3) do you think they're the only team??? 4) what rules were broken? 5) is it wrong for a base runner to scream change-up if they are on 2nd base? Disclaimer: I'm from Houston and of course I want the Astros to win but I don't think a huge advantage was had here. One could easily get just as outraged by the Yankees having a bottomless bank account to pay their salaries. They Yankees paid 218mm vs 168mm for the Astros. Both teams are on the larger end of the spectrum but I would argue that smaller markets have a huge disadvantage vs the major cities.

I'm disappointed that the Astros lost this year but I don't feel compelled to find a reason the Nationals beat us this year. At the end of the day our pitchers failed(ahem Verlander) and our batters couldn't hit the superior pitchers in dc. Ironically the "cheaters" couldn't cheat their way to a second victory. This seems like another case of Twitter and social media amplifying things that don't matter.

<comment><USER24> > 1) at best this happens at~50% of the games.

That is an assumption. We don't know all the facts yet. Some are suggesting the camera could have been nothing more than a smartphone and there is a source from within the Astros org that say some of the players wore electronic buzzers under their shoulder to signal the call to them. There is no reason to rule out signals were known on the road as well.

> 2) what is the end game here?

Stop cheaters from winning titles and saving the sport from ruin like cheating did to the sport of boxing.

> 3) do you think they're the only team?

Probably not but both existing and former Astros speaking up tells us Astros were doing it at an unprecedented level.

> 4) what rules were broken?

First of all sign stealing using technology goes all the way back to 1876. Illegal sign stealing involves mechanical or electronic technology; the rules regarding this have become more stringent over time and continue to evolve. This is also why an 8 second delay was added to the broadcast feed.

> 5) is it wrong for a base runner to scream change-up if they are on 2nd > base?

Screaming anything while the opposing pitcher is about to throw I suspect is against the rules but stealing and signalling the signs in other ways is permitted. This is typically done by the base runner using closed fist or open hands.

> I don't think a huge advantage was had here.

The Astros obviously thought it was enough of an advantage to break the rules to do it. The Astros went from dead last in the AL in strikeout rate in 2016 to 1st in '17 and their strikeout to walk ratio was an extreme outlier compared to the rest of the league.

> Ironically the "cheaters" couldn't cheat their way to a second victory.

Ironic how? Teams were onto them by then. Once you know your opponent is stealing your signs you can use that against them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't see this as an issue, unless expressively forbidden.

The goal is to win, by all means necessary. Like war.

I'm almost 60 now, but in my twenties I thought "why don't teams have people in the stands to do just this, steal the signs."

I was a phreaker back then and always wanted to call the Twins dugout just to see if I could.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sports is explicitly not like war. There's actual rulebooks, and regulators with the power to completely ban teams and players.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm waiting for machine learning to predict play calls for baseball and football. It shouldn't be too hard if it hasn't already been done. Based on the offensive coordinator and things like field position, etc it should be easy to make predictions as to what that human would make based on past choices.

I wonder if that would be considered cheating though If they only used past performance and not real time signal stealing.

<comment><USER27> Why not just use a cannon to shoot the ball?

Ideas like yours take all the fun out of play and ruin it for everyone else. We all know we can build machines to do things better than humans, but so what? It's the uncertainty and imperfection and second guessing that makes a game enjoyable to watch or play in the first place.

<comment><USER28> There's a lot of money and ego at stake in sports world. Enjoyment is a very distant concern.

<comment><USER27> Enjoyment is _why_ attention and money flows toward sports. Hence the swingeing penalties now that this misbehavior have come to light. If the game isn't relatable to enough fans it starts to die.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Who do you use for your email lists? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Who? No one. What? Gnus.</comment>


Why isn't there an easy to issue Free SSL CA? - <AUTHOR>

Where is the SSL Certification Authority that is issuing SSL certificates that are trusted by all browsers without a yearly fee?<p>It's bad enough that startups differentiate pricing tiers with SSL, why do we make it so user un-friendly to secure their visit? <comment><USER2> <http://www.startssl.com/>

They've been doing it for years. So long as you get the intermediate CA cert installed on the server, their free certs seem to work fine in as near as practical "all browsers".

<comment><USER3> Do you have personal experience in using startssl? What are the limitations with its free version? Looking to use an SSL certificate on my website to use it within facebook app.

<comment><USER2> No real limitations at all. They're genuine SSL/TLS certs, the "trick" is that they're only validated by checking you can receive mail at an email address at the domain in question, so while the encryption "works" - you don't get much assurance of "authentication" from them. If I can somehow read mail sent to a prashantmukesh.com email address, I'll be able to convince StartSSL to issue me an SSL cert for it... This is mostly why this isn't such a good idea... It also doesn't really matter, from the point of view of apps requiring https connection - even apps/apis smart enough to check certs and their issuing authorities aren't going to know the difference between an SSL cert that required a Dun & Bradstreet check to acquire and one that only needed access to a firstname.lastname@example.com email account.

<comment><AUTHOR> But that's my point really. Why does the site's owner need to be verified at all?

I believe we should have a SSL cert that only enforces the encryption but makes no claims about the server's owner or that any transaction is guaranteed up to a specific dollar amount.

I know you can self sign, but when the browser shows the user the site is self signed, they get nervous. Conversely, I could get a minimal identification req SSL cert from Godaddy that doesn't alert the user, but I have to pay at least $15 for that right.

My main issue or question is why SSL is paired with COMPANY/PERSON identification? Why do I rely on the CA to verify a company is real? Why aren't there 2 elements. One is encryption, one is identification. Encryption is free to implement with no warnings in the browser. ID can cost money to pay for the verification process.

Thoughts?

<comment><USER4> "Hello, I'm the target server; definitely not a MITM attacker, no way, not at all." Without identification, this is as good as sending the data in plaintext - for all you know, you may be communicating with a hostile proxy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ahh, good point. I wasn't clear.

By not requiring ID, I meant Company name, state, city, etc.

I'm realizing that what I'm wanting is to split the SSL cert into 2 aspects. One provides security and endpoint verification. The other verifies the actual person/company and potentially insures that any losses will be covered. It seems like this is pretty much the idea of an EV cert (more verbose entity ownership) but that costs a ton.

I don't know about you, but I don't use the SSL cert to verify the legitimacy of a company. I do ensure it's there when sending sensitive information though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> TANSTAAFL; moreover, Crypto Is Hard.

It follows that you can get _at best_ two out of these three: Free, Secure, Easy.

</comment><comment><USER5> How would you verify identity in a free but reliable manner ?</comment>


Buy a Pixel if you want timely updates Oh wait - <AUTHOR> https://www.androidauthority.com/buy-a-pixel-if-you-want-timely-updates-oh-wait-1068303/ <comment><USER2> So the Android release works like this:

1\. Google releases the new version.

2\. Recent pixel phones get it around the same day. At this point it's extremely buggy. For example, your phone may not be able to make calls or acess Internet. It may crash twice a day

3\. 3-6 months passes

4\. By this time Google has fixed some of the more urgent bugs.

5\. Only now Samsung and the rest start working on a proper release

6\. 0-3 months passes

7\. Samsung issues an OS update that is polished and mostly free of bugs.

Some companies try to be faster. But that requires a huge team of developers to fix and maintain a moving repo. But as much as we consumers complain about updates, no one is actually buying phones from these companies, so this will not continue forever.

TL;DR: Googles first release is just a beta by anyone elses standard

<comment><USER3> The problem isn't so much how long it takes for a release to make it to your phone, though that's a problem too. A way more serious problem is the large amount of phones _never_ getting any new releases.

<comment><USER2> I don't believe this is true anymore.

Samsung has been updating S and Note series mark 9 & 10 to A10, which I assume is 80% of the US market?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Meanwhile, there are a bunch of Android One phones still running Android 9.

<comment><USER2> The Android One releases from Google turned out to be less than stable. OEM realized they need a lengthy testing period to ensure proper quality.

(Writing this on and Android One phone on A10 beta program)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> And in my experience, when you do finally get the update, it sometimes ends up breaking a lot of existing features. Pixel users have reported multiple times about degraded battery life after an update, and my last experience with Android 10 release was that the software was full of small but annoying bugs.

I've been an Android user since 2.2 and have favored Google products (Nexus phones and now Pixels) exactly because of the vanilla experience and in my case quick updates. I just bought my first iPhone because of the frustration that the recent updates have caused me with Pixel 2. I feel like Android is taking huge steps back in refinement and that is really sad. Even the latest Pixel products look the same as two years ago and have taken steps back in battery life. I wouldn't have believed if someone told me a couple of years back that I would by an Apple product this year.

</comment><comment><USER6> It blows my mind that a company the size of and with the resources of Google can't get this right, even after all this time. It reeks of apathy to me. And even though I've been a dedicated iPhone user since the 6 Plus, I'd genuinely hoped Android would get better eventually since it's much more open and I enjoy customization, but as it stands, I have no compelling reasons to leave Apple's walled garden.

It seems lately that the only time Google can be deigned to do anything radical to solve problems is when it has one regulatory agency or another breathing down it's neck. It's genuinely disheartening to see a company that, when it started, looked to be ready to change how business was done succumb to the same forces that grind up so many others.

<comment><USER7> Google is first and foremost an ad company. Everything else is a distant second.

Having been the primary POC for Google corporate account things have improved a little - they at least pretend to care now and you can occasionally get a human if you are persistent enough.

If you have to deal with them in a professional capacity the underlying message is pretty clear - ad's and search that drives ads are their main focus.</comment></comment>


Yelp Is Replacing Restaurants' Phone Numbers So Grubhub Can Take a Cut - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wjwebw/yelp-is-sneakily-replacing-restaurants-phone-numbers-so-grubhub-can-take-a-cut <comment><USER3> It feels as though much of tech has gone from helping people accomplish their goals efficiently to a business model of extracting rents while providing no or little value.

In this example, what benefit is GrubHub providing to anyone? The person used Yelp solely to look up the phone number of a restaurant. GrubHub deserves 15% of his order for that? Why, because they made a deal to give X% of it to Yelp, and convinced the restaurant this was a good deal?

What value did they provide here?

Meanwgile, Yelp used to be a resource to find good businesses. Now it's... Something else. It's leveraging it's market power to make money rather providing customers with any value.

I don't know what the answer is but it feels like society needs to come up with a new word, new idea, (or probably an old one we've forgotten) and make it both an ethically bad thing and then also an illegal one (or at least one that is taxed higher).

<comment><USER4> To me, this is a sign of grubhub/insert copycat delivery service circling the drain, trying to extract whatever cash they can get before the inevitable. Anecdata, but among my peers people sort by delivery fee or try to game the system for a new user discount. Delivery fees can easily be $7 now which is like buying another entire portion at some restaurants.

Personally, I use grubhub a lot--as a menu to look at for when I call the restaurant directly with my pickup order.

<comment><USER5> Yelp can't grow anymore. Now is when they make money and pay back their investors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been in this industry 30-some years. I thought I'd seen the worst SV has to offer, but my jaw is just on the ground. I mean, I _knew_ Yelp was constantly up to no good, but...just wow.

I suppose I should be furious at Yelp (or GrubHub, or...someone), but I'm really more furious at Apple for having not cut that partnership a _long_ time ago. It just gets my goat every time I click an icon in Apple Maps, Yelp pops up, and there's no way to change data sources. And now this? I'm normally not one for a strongly-worded letter, but I might fire off some feedback on this one.

<comment><USER7> Does anyone remember getting out the phonebook to dial a local tow truck?

<comment><USER8> Tow truck companies and PI lawyers routinely paid $5k/mo+ even in small markets to get those calls from yellowpages ads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've found Google Maps review quality and quantity improved over the last few years so it's rare that I'd even open Yelp in recent months.

With this, I'm deleting my Yelp app.

<comment><USER10> When I used to use Yelp, I found the reviews are so hard to wade though.

So many:

\- I had a bad time .. once.

\- This restaurant isn't as good as this other place that is twice as expensive.

\- We had to wait a "long time".

\- The food sucked (because they don't like the kind of food they serve...).

\- This place sucks and you should go to this other completely different place.

<comment><USER11> With so many good restaurants, why would I go back to one where I had a bad time?

<comment><USER12> That's not the question. It's natural not to want to go back to somewhere something bad happened. The question is why anybody else would care about bad luck that someone had, as opposed to a bad experience that was representative.

<comment><USER11> There is no canonical bad experience. The best estimate is the ratio of good to bad reviews, and most will be from a single experience, unless people suddenly start volunteering to visit restaurants that treated them poorly the first time...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Yelp is such a slimy company.

First they wall off their mobile web reviews to try to force you to download their POS app, they have the whole extortion racket going trying to strongarm restaurants into paying for advertising, and now this.

Friendly reminder - if you are on mobile and trying to read a Yelp review and don't want to download their app, simply hold refresh, click "request desktop site" and it will load the full review without forcing you to get the app.

<comment><USER14> [https://www.yelp-support.com/article/Does-Yelp-extort- small-...](https://www.yelp-support.com/article/Does-Yelp-extort-small- businesses?l=en_US)

I've kind of gotten tired of diving into the whole "yelp extorted my brother's cousin's friend's coworker's business for better ratings" anecdotal story schtick so I'm just going to link the above -- or are you suggesting they're getting away with lying on official communication? If yelp is altering reviews for paying clients, please show the evidence as I have yet to see anything but anecdotal stories about some folks getting a phone call from someone allegedly from yelp allegedly having the power to do this. I suspect, at worst, that they either misunderstood the sales pitch or were contacted by a scummy SEO- like company.

On the mobile experience, what are you referring to? The mobile site is fully functional with reviews, search, ratings, etc. I can't say the same of Twitter, Tumblr, and most major other sites. I despise mobile apps as much as the next person but I hardly see how Yelp is unique or even worse than others here. Please clarify.

You literally do not need the mobile app or even render the desktop site to read full reviews. I'm looking at a fully expanded review in mobile safari right now.

<comment><USER15> I think the challenge with finding firsthand reports on HN is that the owners of small brick-and-mortar businesses that Yelp is alleged to exploit are not well represented in this community.

Having said that, I have firsthand experience in having my own review of such a business censored:

6 months ago I wrote a review for the RazzleDazzle Barber Shop in Riverview, FL. Great little shop, I was surprised that it had zero reviews and was gray in Yelp. A month later, I returned for my second haircut and asked about business. I heard the same story about Yelp pressuring for sales, and mentioned that I had already written a 5-star review.

Upon checking Yelp, I noticed that the shop was still gray with 0 reviews, despite having left one a month ago myself. After carefully reading the site, I found that the keyword is "0 Recommended Reviews." At the bottom is a gray link that leads to more than a dozen reviews that are "Not Recommended", all 5-star, including my own. I wasn't the first to review the shop, the other reviews were hidden.

I wrote Yelp support to ask why this review was censored, despite my other reviews for other businesses being accepted. They assured me that an algorithm decides what reviews are recommended for protection of customers and that's all that's happening.

However, within a day my review was the only recommended review, and the barber shop was live on the site instead of gray. A few other reviews have been accepted since.

Go have a look for yourself, scroll to the bottom of that shop and click the "x Reviews that are currently not recommended" link in gray at the bottom. You will even find my original 5 star review, so perhaps they made a copy of it to get it to show.

<comment><USER16> It's their anti-fraud system. Reviews get moved to Recommend after the _user_ passes some minimum anti-fraud Activity threshold.

If that was your first review, it's almost always unrecommended at first. This stops a lot of the "ask your friends and families" for 5 stars sorts of reviews.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's hard to make money as a directory service with Google and Apple Maps around. The shadier they get, the bigger of a sign it is that they're in trouble financially, I would think.

<comment><USER18> I've tried using Google to find places to eat, but Yelp's search is just so much easier. If I'm in a new place, I just pull up Yelp, click "Restaurants" and go with the first thing that has food I like. It's never failed me yet. It might not be the best or cheapest around, but usually the thing with 4+ stars is still pretty good. We've found a couple of places that way where we keep going back every time we're in town just because we liked it so much.

When I pull up Google and search for [restaurants near me] or [restaurants] in the Maps app, it's a mess. I can't tell what is good or not. Also they usually only have a few ratings. With Yelp I can find places with 100+ ratings out in the middle of nowhere.

The problem for Yelp is that there is no money in providing a great service like that, so they have to do shady things to make up for it.

<comment><USER19> Are you perhaps in the Bay Area? Yelp has a very strong presence in the Bay Area. However, when I travel to the EU and outside of California, I notice that the quality/quantity of reviews from Yelp vs Google is reversed. People advised me to find restaurants using Google Maps instead. Restaurants owners also put up sign asking to be rated on Google.

<comment><USER18> I am in the Bay Area, but my biggest use case is when I travel outside the area.

I agree with you though, Yelp totally breaks down outside of the USA. Seems to work pretty well within the US though. We found some great places in Wyoming near Yellowstone for example.

<comment><USER20> I tend to use TripAdvisor more overseas, it feels less shady, though a year ago an app update made it suck battery like nobody's business, and I had to delete it.

Thankfully, last trip (June) it seemed to work fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Yelp 5 years ago was a truly valuable service. You could go anywhere (in America) and find good food.

Then they lost focus. The app has not improved an ounce since then (seriously why is 'open now' not a default filter) and they've spent a lot of time doing shady things or complaining about other companies. They've tried to get into reservations, delivery, and non-food services but with half-assed attempts at each. They also did a really bad job at maintaining a healthy reviewer community (Google has done much better).

It's a shame because I don't think any other app took the lead here. Yelp just walked backwards into the pack.

<comment><USER22> It incorporated elements of delight, too, like a rocket ship that showed when you scrolled the page. I feel these lighthearted things are symptomatic of a product-driven culture, or at least a culture that empowered engineers to add Easter eggs. Now that its sales driven, I'm not sure that jives well with recruiting engineering talent.

<comment><USER23> I remember they added the "has Pokestop" tag when Pokemon Go first released. Was a fun addition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Amazing. Yelp redirects the customer who intended to look up their number in Yelp, redirects them GrubHub. GrubHub then grifts the restaurant for it.

These online order companies are grifters. With tricks and sneaky fees, they exploit the restaurants, they exploit the customers, and if delivery is involved, they'll exploit the driver too.

<comment><USER4> I wonder what the solution is? Restaurants really should be running their own delivery, but that means hiring more staff which many cannot afford to do in a major city where commercial rents are extraordinary.

<comment><USER25> The solution is to enforce business transparency, and fair labor laws. It should be clear on the Yelp UI that they number they give me is for grubhub. If I want food delivered, it should be by drivers who are fairly compensated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Funneling things through the app is just unhelpful on many levels.

The interface when clicking on a web page from Yelp is worse than using the browser directly; therefore, instead of tapping, I read the web address and just go type it out.

And don't even get me started on E-mail/communication with businesses. Recently I tried contacting a contractor, and happened to start the request from a form in the Yelp app. Since the _very first thing on the form_ was asking for my E-mail address, I logically assumed that I would receive an E-mail reply. Instead, nothing; after awhile, I assumed just needed to find somebody else. Then, days later (or whenever I wandered into the Yelp app again), and only after I _just happened_ to tap on some stupid icon in the corner, I finally see a reply: _in the app_. That is utterly useless! In fact, all of these "E-mail look-alike" interfaces are useless: I don't need your company to completely recreate your own in-box interface that will surely suck in some way, when you could have just allowed E-mail to be used. Heaven forbid I dare to communicate with someone without your knowledge. So, yet again, like with URLs, now I just dig up the web site manually, dig up a real E-mail address or phone number manually, and contact them manually.

</comment><comment><USER27> I had to install their app to get in line at a local restaurant. Immediately uninstalled.

I don't see why people use Yelp other than the fact that they have a mindshare dominance on ratings. User generated/internet 2.0 style food ratings are basically useless anyway, add in all of the other shady stuff Yelp does and you have a hard pass from me.

<comment><USER28> I use Yelp since its significantly harder to fake reviews on it than it is on Google. That, and the community culture is centered on high-quality reviews.

<comment><USER29> As a Google guide, I can flag irrelevant content in Google reviews.

<comment><USER30> I like and have used Google reviews for a while after having had enough of Yelp's issues, to the point where I removed my many reviews from Yelp. However, I think Google has a ways to go to remove junk reviews. For example, 'Baguette et Chocolat' near Austin pissed off some open-carry person, who I think also runs a gun blog, last year by asking him to leave when he ignored their state-law-compliant signs prohibiting the same. He then proceeded to command his fans to leave bad reviews for this restaurant, and they complied in droves leaving useful gems such as 'Found out the owners are hoplophobes. Never giving them my business again.' . I spent quite a bit of time reporting these and I think many others did as well. Yelp shut down review logging for this restaurant fairly quickly at the time but I am not sure Google did anything - the above "review" is still present as of today. I am disappointed with Google but have come to realize that they embody the opposite of the motto: "if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing well." Edit: Google still allows logging reviews without comments, which further worsens the problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Would any Yelpers here care to comment on the issue? I interviewed there in the past, and know friends that work there. When I asked what they thought about the "blackmail" rumors from a while back they just laughed it off, because they honestly thought they were just rumors. And they enjoyed their work, and their work-life balance, and all that. Sounded like a fun, positive place to work, if you ignored the headlines.

So there's a disconnect here. Is there a dark pattern and slimy business going on in Yelp, or is this simply a weird situation that got sensationalized by a news article? I'm hesitant to make any assumptions.

<comment><USER32> I am a former Yelp engineer. I think the thing this story describes is dumb and bad and they should stop doing it. Inserting yourself as a useless middleman is a classic shitty startup move.

Here are some great reasons for current and former Yelp engineers not to engage in internet debates about accusations of nefariousness in other areas such as the review filter or sorting algorithm:

1\. Being in internet debates mostly sucks in general, especially with people who by default hate you.

2\. Yelp has a blanket policy that you shouldn't engage in these debates.

3\. Yelp has been sued some number of times and might be again. I would be paranoid that something I said here would be used in another bullshit lawsuit, especially if I were truly in a position to know things.

4\. It's pretty clear that the PR battle was lost long ago, regardless of the truth. Leaving a comment on a thread like this changes literally nothing and is a waste of time. Yes, that means I think I'm wasting my time right now. :-)

Every Yelp engineer I've met has intentions at least as good as, say, the average Google engineer. Sites like Yelp can have negative effects on small businesses the same way e.g. Spotify might have an effect on independent music or Airbnb has an effect on the apartment rental market in a city, and engineers aren't always good at recognizing those effects as problematic, but Yelp engineers are certainly no worse than your standard Silicon Valley type.

I still trust Yelp reviews more than I trust local business reviews on any other platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Developers who have been asked to implement a UX dark pattern like this one (or Yelp's decision to forcibly open the App Store without warning in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20625852](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20625852)), did you implement it? Why or why not?

I can't imagine a case where I would be skilled enough to obtain employment at Yelp, and thus at other companies too, and yet would agree to implement something particularly slimy instead of quitting.

Obviously some people make different decisions, though. If you worked at a well-known company when they implemented an intentionally deceptive darkpattern, perhaps others can learn from your experience.

<comment><USER34> While I haven't implemented anything like this, and have pushed back when I've seen dark patterns like this before, it's not hard to imagine a situation where someone would feel like they have to.

It's a fairly privileged position to be able to just up and quit. Even in the bay area where you can in theory get another job fairly quickly, not everyone has enough savings to bridge a gap, and health insurance I'm sure could play a part. Not even mentioning what I'm sure is the most common reason of all: predatory visa statuses that are tied to an employer. Ie, you quit, you have to leave the country "immediately".

Edit to add: Perhaps this is just another reason why having high skilled visas and work statuses tied to a specific employer is not the right answer.

<comment><USER35> It's also not hard to imagine a situation where developers happily implement it. Developers can get invested in their employer and rationalize their decisions just like anyone else. Management will provide plenty of help in doing so.

I'm sure there are some who say, "this sucks but I can't afford to say no." But I bet there are a lot more who say, "cool, this will help us make money." Developers aren't uniquely virtuous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Grubhub's process of creating fake websites that compete with the restaurant's official site so that they can take a cut of any direct orders is so scummy.

I refuse to have anything to do with either company. I care about my local restaurants, not slimy practices like that.

</comment><comment><USER36> >"I definitely implore people to forgo the three seconds of convenience to help neighborhood businesses," he said.

Interesting way to end the article. I think we have all seen lines around the block for the new hotness in local resturants. If the owner is trying to get people in the door like this, then it is likely that these apps are not the culprit in the issues that the owner is facing.

In the article, grubhub points out a business that they helped out by pointing the business to switch to poke' bowls. There are some interesting points about that:

1) Per my reading, they only can point out one example. I did not see any stats or talk about a population, just an anecdote. I may have missed something though, or the writer decided to not use that sound bite.

2) That is consulting. They are mixing referral fees and trying to point out that they are sucessful un-solicited consultants too. This is not initially murky stuff, but it can get mixed up really fast. The incentives are not well aligned.

<comment><USER37> How does your anecdote of dining at a hot new restaurant refute the challenges restaurants are facing with GrubHub's fees getting tacked onto typical phone- in orders?

<comment><USER36> Sorry about that, I should have probably broken that up into two comments. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Streeteasy started employing the same dark pattern a few months ago. It seems like companies who have an effective monopoly just cannot resist the temptation.

They replaced the listing agent's number with a number that takes you to one of their agents. (After a while they added back the option to contact the actual listing agent, but you have to first click on a link to get to another page.) Also, as soon as I contact an agent about a listing their agents start spamming me with texts and emails written in a way that try to obscure that they are not the ones who have the listing. At this point I never contact an agent through the Streeteasy platform. I just google the agent's name to find their contact info.

</comment><comment><USER39> My favorite sushi-restaurant SugarFish was originally a take-away-sushi shop, the sushi is very high quality and somewhat inexpensive for the quality ($40 a meal). Also dine-in lines are consistently super long (they don't take reservations), so I like to order pick-up / take-out. Except, now they force you to order take-out through Postmates which charges a large 15% fee and a flat service-charge (that I don't recall but will update here when sugar fish opens). Sucks because I love the restaurant but really don't appreciate paying Postmates fees when I'm picking it up myself. When you call in an order they auto-direct you to Postmates.

<comment><USER40> > _inexpensive ... ($40 a meal)_

What a wonderful world we live in.

<comment><USER39> You misquoted that. Sushi is expensive, the point is it's all relative and I think for the quality it's typically more in the range of $60 a meal. Very expensive compared to other meals sure, but a good value for the quality of sushi.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I think it's high time for a full-blown FTC investigation into Yelp for restraint of trade, consumer fraud, false advertising, and whatever else the FTC can think of. These parasites have outlived their usefulness.

Failing that, a high-profile class-action lawsuit might get their attention.

</comment><comment><USER42> I'm no lawyer, but to my layman's eyes this has class action lawsuit written all over it. Would love to hear an actual tort attorney's perspective on this.

<comment><USER24> I'm no lawyer, but I'll bet on mandatory binding arbitration and no class action stuck into the agreement.

<comment><USER42> Isn't agreement to no class action an ipso facto law violation and unenforceable in most states -- e.g., the way noncompete provisions are in California?

<comment><USER24> The other way around. The supreme court continually permits no class action in agreements split right down political lines.

<comment><USER42> I learn new things on HN every day!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I remember a few years ago when Yelp testified before Congress about how unfair mean ole Google was.

[https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/11-9-21Stoppe...](https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/11-9-21StoppelmanTestimony.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER44> My local handyman (he is a real engineering, just does this after getting out of working a corporate job) that is booked months in advance told me a story. He was listed on Yelp with perfect reviews. One day Yelp called him and ask him about some paid for service to improve his listing. He said no thanks. A few days later he when from showing up in the top of the search to near the bottom. He is a great guy and does fantastic work. I was done with Yelp from that point.

</comment><comment><USER45> > "There's a button where you could hit play and so I was like, what is this?" > he said. "I hit play, and the first call was me on the phone, which freaked > me out because I didn't know I was being recorded."

So is grubhub providing a notification to the restaurant that they are being recorded in two party-consent states?

And is it possible to get on the grubhub platform without agreeing to pay the marketing commission for phonecalls?

</comment><comment><USER46> Some of the practices in the article sound criminal. Grubhub appears to be recording conversations to which they are not a party as far as either the customer or the restaurant knows. The message they play does not sound like a notification that _GrubHub_ is recording the call. I am not a lawyer, but I bet this is an illegal wiretap in at least one state.

</comment><comment><USER47> Is there a way to turn off the Yelp integration when using DuckDuckGo?

</comment><comment><USER48> Yelp is terrible to work with. From my personal experience they've crossed over into spam territory. They will call, email, leave lengthy voicemails (with rather extortionist language), non-stop trying to get you to pay for their premium services.

Really slimy. I'm not one to advocate for big G but hoping them or Apple makes them irrelevant.

</comment><comment><USER49> I've never used grubhub, but this is shady.

In a rush I once had to find and call a hotel and get a reservation. The site I used looked like a typical priceline or whatever- looked legit. Instead of providing the phone number of the hotel front desk, it sent me to some shady hotel booking service. I was tired and probably not thinking straight - <USER2> they took my card and the room was booked. After arriving at the hotel I indeed had a reservation, that was nice. What wasn't nice was that it wasn't paid for. I had no idea who I called, and it was super late so I had no options. If I wasn't in a gigantic stressful situation at the time I would have done more to figure out what happened.

Not saying that grubhub or yelp is THAT shady, but that kind of business practice is.

</comment><comment><USER50> Fun fact: this is not the first time Yelp has done this. I recall over ten years ago they tried exactly this feature as a way to monetize listing phone numbers as part of premium business listings, or something like that. They would charge for phone calls like ad clickthrus.

An interesting technical detail: they made the phone numbers gifs so they wouldn't be indexed by search engines.

I could be misremembering details and I can't find anything online, but I'm pretty sure this happened.

</comment><comment><USER51> In my area, Slice bought domains containing local pizzerias' names. Slice then set up the domains with sites _branded with the local businesses ' branding_ and replaced the phone numbers and online ordering with Slice's.

Turns out Slice was able to beat those businesses at the SEO game and now those fake sites are the first results when looking for local pizzerias' contact info.

<comment><USER23> This is the exact game that OrderAhead played a few years ago:

[https://www.geekwire.com/2015/orderahead-restaurant- website-...](https://www.geekwire.com/2015/orderahead-restaurant-website- deception-includes-widespread-violations-of-google-terms-of-service/)

I'm curious what local pizzerias think about this

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> With Yelp around, I'm genuinely glad to not be in a retail or restaurant business.

They are the digital equivalent of "nice shop you got there, it's be a real shame if anyone broke the window, for just a small payment, we can protect you..."

As a potential user, considering how they actively "manage" the reviews, I simply do not trust them. I find far better information elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER53> Considering that you can't opt out of a Yelp listing, I think they've crossed a line here. They're basically putting up misleading directory pages for real businesses that intentionally have wrong information.

I hope someone can successfully argue that willfully spreading misleading information about someone else's business is wrong and actionable.

</comment><comment><USER54> Last month, Grubhub hijacked restaurants web traffic by buying similar domains for the same reason, so this isn't too surprising for them: [https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/28/19154220/grubhub- seamless...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/28/19154220/grubhub-seamless- fake-restaurant-domain-names-commission-fees)

I assume Grubhub's Eat24 acquisition from Yelp came with some poorly written contract clause that allows them to force Yelp to implement this absurd feature as part of their "ordering partner integration", but maybe Yelp is unethical AND stupid after all and is doing it for part of the take. We'll probably never know. Either way their reputation will be ruined.

Disclosure: I interned at Yelp engineering and enjoyed it. The engineers were all nice people with as much integrity as one would hope.

</comment><comment><USER55> Yelp should obviously have just been upfront that they were going to be taking commissions, the fact that they weren't strikes me as symptomatic of a dysfunctional org (that failed to actually align on this decision but pushed it out anyway in a shady way).

<comment><USER56> Grubhub is taking the commission from the restaurant in this case.

<comment><USER57> and Yelp from Grubhub.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> The "we bring you new customers" pitch that food portals is incredibly deceitful. Portals didn't arrive on the scene with millions of customers to send to restaurants. They arrived with zero and siphoned them away using these dirty tricks (mini sites pretending to be made by the restaurant, phone numbers owned by the portals, requiring the portal stickers on the restaurants' windows).

This blog post shows what happens when restaurants decide to leave portals: [https://www.flipdish.com/ie/the-effects-of-leaving-costly- fo...](https://www.flipdish.com/ie/the-effects-of-leaving-costly-food- portals/)

</comment><comment><USER59> I'm curious whether Yelp is only doing this in states without two-party consent to record. In the article the author (Yelp user/restaurant customer) is told the line is recorded before being connected through but the restaurant employee on the other end appears completely unaware. I would guess there are at least a few Attorneys General who would take issue with this approach.

It's not even close to the shadiest part of Yelp's business but it's one that at least some businesses could work together and push back on without running afoul of the binding arbitration/class action prohibition in Yelp's ToS.

<comment><USER56> The article states that Grubhub is recording the calls.

<comment><USER59> ... yes. In states that require two-party consent to record a conversation (CA & MA, for example) Grubhub can't record a call without telling _everyone_ on the call it's being recorded. The article opens with a story of the author having a conversation with a restaurant employee who's clearly unaware of the recording.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> How do you use Yelp when you know that a business can bribe Yelp with advertizing and they will suppress negative reviews? and vice versa -- if a business refuses to advertise, they will suppress positive reviews .

</comment><comment><USER61> (Serious Q) What other good alternatives are out there for Yelp?

<comment><USER62> I use Foursquare and really like it (compared to Yelp). As it's crowd-sourced, the data can be iffy (missing hours, phone numbers) in some lower density regions, but that hasn't been a huge drawback.

<comment><USER63> Loved Foursquare, but stopped using it when it seemed all the recommendations were a few years old. Even now I go into it and most reviews/recommendations are from 2014. Shame it fell off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Does anyone know of a good alternative to implement a waitlist for restaurants that inst yelp? Plenty of small restaurants use it because it's easy and texts customers about their position in line.

[https://www.yelp.nowait.com/f](https://www.yelp.nowait.com/f)

</comment><comment><USER65> Someone should build a product for restaurants that receives the call, terminates it, and immediately calls the customer back directly. If you can quietly get a critical mass of restaurants onto it, then Yelp wouldn't be able to punish those restaurants.

</comment><comment><USER66> Lots of sites replace emails and telephone numbers, this is essentially twilios whole service. They can record phone calls and read all emails back and forth. Mostly just to do analysis and maybe increase the quality of responses

</comment><comment><USER67> Yelp is now in free for all mode and monetizing whatever they can. They forced a bad ZocDoc integration, which was an absolute nightmare, and broke our Yelp pages overnight. Not surprised at all to see this.

</comment><comment><USER68> What value does Yelp provide to end users? I've tried it in the past, but it never feels like I get any value. A simple Google search (not Maps, just search the usual way) works just as well, if not better.

</comment><comment><USER69> Isn't the restaurant business already hard enough without being charged $8 to answer a customer's question.

Well, I guess restaurants can end their relationship with Yelp and customers can stop using Yelp too.

</comment><comment><USER70> IDK... a referral fee on a phone order just seems absurd.

</comment><comment><USER71> (IANAL) I smell a class action lawsuit coming, especially if this is being done without the knowledge or consent of the restaurants in question.

</comment><comment><USER72> This seems perfect for a class action suit.

</comment><comment><USER73> Yelp is bad. Doordash is a close second.

</comment><comment><USER74> Isn't Yelp essentially committing fraud by colluding with GrubHub to impersonate business entities?

</comment><comment><USER75> I've been avoiding yelp, but it's pretty easy to forget why until something like this is posted. Gross

</comment><comment><USER76> Are there alternatives to Yelp? Are people using Foursquare or Google Maps?

<comment><USER77> Pretty much. I've never used Yelp nuch. I guess they never focused much on the world outside the US. I just checked my area in Berlin (which has loads of really nice places) and they have almost nothing for this area which means their data for Berlin is 95% incomplete. For reference, several of the top places for Berlin on Foursquare are in the same area. Yelp seems to have none of those.

From working on POI data in Nokia Maps back in the day, I remember that this is a tough market. A lot of sites from back in the day no longer exist. Yelp apparently bought qype at some point which used to have pretty decent coverage. I actually worked with their data at Nokia so I know. It seems all of that is missing in action in Berlin (where they used to have most restaurants covered). I guess that was more of an acquihire/competetitor eliminating move. Either way, their data was pretty bad as I recall but not this bad.

Google Maps typically has most places, even the really obscure/shitty ones. Foursquare is a bit less predictable depending on how many users they have locally but it's typically great in popular areas. Both have invested in great user feedback mechanisms to improve the accuracy of their data. E.g. knowing when a new place opens and an old one disappears or changes name is key. Between those two, you get a decent impression what is good in an area. The reviews in Google Maps are usually pretty helpful and I see little evidence of cheating (though that obviously happens).

I guess what happened is that Yelp used to be a cool hop user driven review website and then VC money took over and now the users are the product that they sell to their customers the restaurants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> Thanks for the heads up. Time to uninstall the Yelp app.

</comment><comment><USER79> I didn't realize Grubhub was such a sleazy company.

</comment><comment><USER80> Looks like a fraud to me.

</comment><comment><USER81> Makes me think really hard about tech's blind adoration for the "PayPal mafia." I find myself seeing more instances of soul crushing amoral behavior from this group of entrepreneurs than just about any other group.

<comment><USER82> It's worth pointing out that Google shamelessly cloned Yelp and funnels everyone into using their clone when they search for restaurants. If Yelp is in desperate spot its because Google put them there.

<comment><USER83> Most companies face stiff competition and that's no reason to excuse immoral behavior. Not to mention that Google tried to acquire Yelp and was turned down. Either Yelp's plan to take on Google always included copious dark patterns, or their earlier plans totally failed and this is what they've fallen back on. Either way Yelp can't die soon enough.

<comment><USER82> What are you talking about stiff competition? Google just lazily cloned it and hijack the results of restaurant searches so they win by default.

<comment><USER84> You challenge that it is stiff competition in your first sentence, then you define that Google is, indeed, stiff competition in your second.

<comment><USER82> Hijacking search results because they are sour the Yelp deal didn't go their way isn't competing LOL. They've already been fined billions for similar behavior.

<comment><USER85> They own the search results. Google isn't a public utility that gets hijacked.

Yelp can start their own search competitor if they enjoy(ed) the synergy.

<comment><USER82> EU regulators disagree.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Taiwan put on list of countries by US defense to goad China - <AUTHOR> https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3013497/latest-move-likely-goad-beijing-us-defence-department-report <comment><USER2> Wow, why is this not reported on by more prominent American newspapers? What is the point of doing this? Is this a new strategy to try any and everything we can to piss China off?

Calling VSG Donald...

</comment><comment><USER3> The United State's longstanding military sales to Taiwan aside, there are many people in the current U.S. administration and congress who want to rip up the "don't rock the boat" playbook and push back against real or perceived moves by China to exert control over its neighbors.

Some outright want to topple the Chinese Communist Party. Quoting Steve Bannon in an NPR piece published last month:

"I think ultimate success is regime change ... the goal is quite simply to break the back of this totalitarian mercantilist economic society."

[https://www.npr.org/2019/05/07/719947020/inside-the-white- ho...](https://www.npr.org/2019/05/07/719947020/inside-the-white-houses- bitter-fight-over-china)

<comment><USER4> Wasn't that the point since Clinton</comment></comment>


Show HN: I built a simple to use SMS tool for devs - <AUTHOR> https://smallsms.app <comment><AUTHOR> This uses true SMS providers (no email gateways here) and does so at a pretty small cost.

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm unable to get it to load.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry this should be resolved now!</comment></comment>


1.1B Taxi Rides with MapD and 8 Nvidia Tesla K80s - <AUTHOR> http://tech.marksblogg.com/billion-nyc-taxi-rides-nvidia-tesla-mapd.html <comment><USER2> Nice article and explanation of the future of BI analytics.</comment>


Prezi: mind-map style presentations - <AUTHOR> http://www.prezi.com

<comment><USER2> Prezi is awesome for some sorts of presentations, even if just to be different from ppt / keynote for a while. It's got really simple primitives, which forces you to deliver a pretty clean presentation.

Recently it has been used at NYU poly in their reverse engineering classes: [http://prezi.com/a5tm-lf0879-/reverse- engineering-101-nyupol...](http://prezi.com/a5tm-lf0879-/reverse- engineering-101-nyupoly-2010/) [http://prezi.com/e5a2tumdqocj/reverse- engineering-102-nyupol...](http://prezi.com/e5a2tumdqocj/reverse- engineering-102-nyupoly-2010/)

and has been used by the immunitysec guys quite a bit too: [http://prezi.com/kmyvgiobsl1d/pyretic-rich-smith- blackhatdef...](http://prezi.com/kmyvgiobsl1d/pyretic-rich-smith- blackhatdefcon-2010/)

This year i used it to demo a timeline of memory corruption bugs over the ages too: [http://prezi.com/iemlmzvpnk_d/the-almost-complete-history- of...](http://prezi.com/iemlmzvpnk_d/the-almost-complete-history-of-memory- corruption-attacks/)

It rocks..</comment>


Show HN: One chatbot for all your search needs from OneBar - <AUTHOR> https://onebar.io/onebar-for-slack <comment><AUTHOR> Hey, HN!

We, at OneBar, have been working hard over the last month to deliver our new product - a chatbot for Slack, that allows you to search your company's intranet from one place. It connects to Jira, Confluence, Google Docs, Github/Bitbucket and HubSpot, pulls the data into one index and gives you a set of convenient tools for searching across them.

Feel free to use the 30-days trial to play around with it. We would really appreciate the feedback.

P.S. as most of the things on Show HN, this is a beta-quality software, there may be bugs. Sorry for that in advance :)</comment>


Gwitter: Unix command-line client for Twitter written in Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ajensenwaud/gwitter

<comment><USER2> This probably isn't it, but a mh for Twitter would be pretty cool.

<comment> mh- a what?

<comment><USER2> The email client. No relation.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MH_Message_Handling_System](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MH_Message_Handling_System)</comment></comment></comment>


Turing Complete Version Numbers - <AUTHOR> http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/turing_complete_version_numbers/ <comment><USER2> It makes for an interesting-sounding title, but:

> This is simply Brainfuck with operators that are legal in (Debian) version > numbers kept as-is, and some numbers replacing the rest.

Is it known to be (or else what is) a minimum number of such operators for Turing completeness?

I ended the post thinking that was the more interesting question, but now that I comment, I wonder if that's even meaningful without restricting what it means to be an 'operator' \- 6 and 9 from the OP are quite convoluted for example.

<comment><USER3> Yes. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_instruction_set_computer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_instruction_set_computer)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting, but I was expecting something more than brainfuck encoded into "(Debian) version numbers".

I think I was expecting it to be about the semantics of the sequence of numbers and turing complete metric for deciding if a sequence is valid or not.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, at the end of the article I thought "Wow, he found an example of a set containing at least 8 elements!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Package: node-debbundle-acorn (6.2.1+ds+~0.4.0+~4.0.0+really4.0.0+~1.0.0+~5.0.1+ds+~1.7.0+ds+~0.1.1+~0.3.1+~0.2.0+~0.1.0+~0.3.0+~0.3.0-5)

<comment><USER7> …in Debian _experimental_ ¹. In Debian _testing_ it will probably have a more sane version designator, since all the versions of the package in testing, stable and unstable all have normal versions.

1\. [https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/acorn](https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/acorn)</comment></comment>


The Peloponnesian War officially ended in 1996 - <AUTHOR> https://www.upi.com/Archives/1996/03/12/Athens-Sparta-sign-peace-pact/9963826606800/ <comment><USER2> I submitted this a while back: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_extended_by_diplo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_extended_by_diplomatic_irregularity)

Plenty of weird stories, like Montenegro being at war with Japan from 1904 to 2006.</comment>


Show HN: Private time tracking software that helps improve your productivity - <AUTHOR> https://getmetame.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Creator here.

Have you ever wondered about the time you spent being productive? Two years ago, I learnt of Elon Musk's 80-hour work weeks. I reflected on my own productivity and realized the huge amount of time I spent on social media, news articles and YouTube. I began searching for tools to monitor my computer usage.

During my search, I came across many automatic time tracking tools that were either too complicated or lacked the features I desired. Employee surveillance and time billing tools were an overkill for my needs and many solutions were cloud based, which presented privacy concerns.

I decided to build my own automatic time tracking solution. For language familiarity, I used .NET for the data collection layer with SQLite for the database. The UI layer was built using Angular5 served via an Electron app. SignalR was used for real-time data updates and d3.js was used for charting.

After two years of development, the app is now ready. To ensure privacy, data collection and processing happen locally. The UI was designed to be simple and intuitive. Charts are animated and updated in real-time for extra polish.

While I have not reached Muskian levels of productivity yet, I've gained valuable insights and awareness as to how I spend my time.

Hope you guys like it! Any feedback is welcome.</comment>